They Aren’t You
One of the hardest parts about really growing up is the realization that you must learn how to hear yourself, like a self-listening comprehension. My upbringing discouraged this — it suited my parents and teachers to follow their instructions. What I really, really thought..I was conditioned to mute, bury and feel ashamed or guilty — to do otherwise led to conflict, sometimes terrible ones.
A lot of people avoid working on this listening comprehension by choosing the path of least resistance: picking a “tribe” to align one’s behavior with what they do and value. Uncertainty about how to navigate a problem is usually solved by consulting or mimicking from among that tribe. This can include family members, a significant other, a mentor or close friends whom you‘ve grown accustomed to let mold your methods of making decisions.
But if the day should ever come — and I hope it does — that you face a problem your tribe doesn’t consider a problem or worth pursuing, you’re on your own. Or it’s a very private matter you’ll not discuss with anyone, you won’t know how to navigate it and may not even dare to.
And I’m not talking about being flippant or ironic by doubling down on the craziest impulse/reaction simply because you can. I mean how you really feel about it and what you really want to do about it is at the mercy of interpretation by those to whom you’ve mostly outsourced the hearing of yourself, needing them to explain you back to you or approve of your choices. You’ll always be reliant on external validation to determine who you are.
It’s very comforting to believe those we want to trust and/or respect of having our best interest at heart — they probably do, maybe they don’t, perhaps they once did but no longer. Maybe they’re bullshitting you because they love the sound of themselves giving advice. Maybe they’re feeding you platitudes because they want to be nice or find you attractive.
Stop. Why even be subject to these conditionals, whether true or not, that have nothing to do with what you’re questioning or hearing from yourself? At the end of the day of the day, people speak through their lens, their priorities, what only they want to understand. At the end of the day, the fact is: they aren’t you.
It matters less that they aren’t the more you learn to hear yourself and genuinely comprehend it.